What’s all the fuss about globalization being either good or bad, manageable or inevitable? Globalization is but a fuzzy measure of how globally connected, integrated, and dependent you are on others in terms of economic, technological, political, cultural, social, and not the least ecological interchange. Last time you ever poked fun at that goofy Icelander for believing in his wights, elves, and huldufólk (“hidden people”), for he’ll come right back at ya, by closing his country’s banks – turning a whole bunch of UK depositors into such huldufólk – and shutting down your airspace for weeks on end (and all you can do is sue Thor for spewing volcanic ash and other forms of Icelandic ectoplasm, including Björk, over your Fatherland). (Though on that note, the brave pilots of Deutsche Lufthansa must be congratulated for being the first to face the pulverized magma, proudly living their corporate motto that the “Hansa is flying even when the birds are walking.”)

No, globalization would be a simple and straightforward matter if we just called it global trade (and indeed, if it was just that: worldwide import/export), and if it wasn’t for such complicating factors as the vast inequalities accentuated but perhaps not caused by putting us all on an economic Mercator projection, an equal free-trade footing. In the good old days, it used to be fair and equitable: you’d send a nutter like Marco Polo off on his Silk Road to scam the Kublai Khan with some cheap Venetian costume jewelry, and the fool would come home with spaghetti – home being Italy, mind you! Let’s call this one “Bucket A”: arguments for or against the notion that the world’s haves and have-nots will benefit very differently from the effects of globalization. If the upper left-hand corner of your paycheck says “The World Bank Group,” you’ll likely be a naysayer, arguing that global inequality has risen as a function of increased globalization for a number of factual reasons that are measured in something called the “Gini coefficient,” and the explication thereof would stretch the scope of this blog as much an A-Rod-professed monogamy. Know that your blogger – like most civilized people – categorically condemns the exploitation of impoverished workers and joins with militant fervor in the persecution of all exploiters of child labor (if you can, check out our friend David Arkless’s and his company Manpower’s support of http://www.notforsalecampaign.org/ – a rather worthwhile cause!).

Some of the other, softer, and more academic arguments brought forth by the anti-Davos crowd (rash boarders, by and large, who eschew après-ski and raclette with Angelina Jolie) have to do mainly with agriculture subsidies in rich countries (thereby lowering the market price for poor farmers’ crops), the non-existence or at best weakened state of labor unions in destitute regions, and – oh behold, the Bugaboo! – the rapid growth of offshore outsourcing. In “Bucket B” we shall lump all arguments either in favor of or opposed to the notion that globalization will revert all “things” back to their normal mean. And all these things are purportedly economic, technological, political, cultural, social, and perhaps even ecological in nature (you can appreciate how complicated a well-rounded treatment of globalization can get – and most of them alas are as cohesive as Destiny’s Child). Think of it as the global equilibrium point, where say a big media company in the States is outsourcing all of its IT development to India, where the Indian IT developers – because of these two interlocking economic trends called global wage arbitrage and purchase price parity – are making a respectable middle-class living, allowing them in turn to tune into, as it so happens, their client’s satellite TV channel to watch the admittedly timeless episodes of Rachel and Friends, thus sending about $1.50 in revenues back to Burbank, California for each $1.00 spent on outsourcing. The labor savings and the incremental foreign revenues are strengthening the firm in the U.S. such that it can afford to hire more domestic workers. A spiraling win-win scenario, or so it would appear, were it not for the pesky competition all now filing into Bangalore, tilting the local supply-and-demand ratio towards ever inflating wages. Over time, as you would expect, the Bengaḷūrus will be able to command the same level of pay as the good folks back home in Burbank. That’s what “mean reversion” means in this case: everyone’s making the same rupees and watching the same TV shows (where the largest common denominator will, thank heavens, also be the lowest one – watch out Slumdog, here come Jessica Simpson’s hair extensions).

Aforementioned Buckets A and B deal with resource re-distribution and societal re-shaping, respectively. It is perhaps intuitive that according to the KOF (ETH Zürich) Index of Globalization, Belgium, Austria, and Sweden rank first among the world’s most globalized nations (and that despite ABBA!), while Iran, Burundi, and North Korea are plotting away in impressive isolation. Cynics will contend that although the driving forces behind globalization are well understood, corporations (mostly again in rich countries) are in the driver’s seat, and thus it is hardly surprising that globalization will follow a corporate, and almost by definition, opaque agenda. Others point to the “avengers” of globalization, those that are part of a nation’s diaspora, the reverse exodus of Western-trained workers back to their country of origin (such as the legions of highly educated and very successful Indians in Silicon Valley, for example, returning home to start new businesses in India). And of course, there are those who watch Roy Rogers movies on TCM and eat lots of apple pie and claim that the United States will never fall behind, because we – and nobody else! – have the monopoly on innovation. (I’ve got something innovative for you, and it’s not the Xbox 360: here in the States we’ve got more massage therapists entering the workforce every year than computer scientists; and we’re now graduating more social workers from our colleges than engineers – of course, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with massage therapy or social work, quite the contrary, but you shouldn’t then wonder why someone moved your cheese all the way from Chennai, or why there are as many Indians on the list of the top-ten richest people in the world as there are Americans.)

I’ll close with a contention that may well be controversial: our conception of globalization is about as relevant today as Paul Bremer’s last lecture in the Sunni auditorium at Baghdad University on why “Democracy is not a spectator sport.” Globalization has been a decidedly Western concept ever since the Greco-Roman world established trade links with the Parthians and the Han. It’s pretty evident that the Chinese and the Indians – the only two countries with more than a billion people each which together make up nearly 40% of the world’s population – find our notions of global connectivity, integration, and interdependence about as quaint as a Quaker’s chuckle. Bucket A, Bucket B, pro or con, it really doesn’t matter. You might as well try to explain to an Indian “classical” musician the difference between Mozart and Miles Davis or insist to a Chinese that opera is all about stout white men crooning Verdi. Give it another 30 years, and China will produce 40% of the world GDP, with the U.S. (15%) and the EU (5%) lagging emphatically behind. With Chinese economic hegemony and supremacy in hardware, and India’s leadership in software and an unrelenting focus on scientific and technical education, and a potential coming together of two powerful allies at the purposeful exclusion of the United States, the economic, political, and social constructs of the West have lost their relevance as far as the Dragon and the Tiger are concerned (notwithstanding the tragic reality that both countries will still have to lift hundreds of millions out of abject poverty.)

Please feel free to contact me (christophe.kolb@talenttrust.com) should you or your company be thinking about establishing an offshore presence in either India or China. Our company Talent Trust (http://www.talenttrust.com/) has a ten-year history and successful track record of doing business in both countries and helping our clients successfully navigate some of the challenges of globalization.

Today’s blog is but a substitute. I had carefully prepared for you, dear reader, a case study of a large and complex software rollout at a large multinational corporation that would highlight some of the challenges as well as suggest some best practices when implementing an IT solution at massive scale and in a global business environment. I had won the buy-in of my business partner, an important man at that important company, and he and I set out to collaborate on a set of informative and prescriptive Do’s-and-Don’ts and Lessons-Learned. Good stuff. I was about to go Gutenberg on that collaborative body of findings (naturally sanitized for public consumption and stripped of all proprietary detail), when I got a call from my partner sounding as animated as a wild mongoose lemur (Eulemur mongoz) at the height of its mating ritual. A veritable farrago of concerns is recited why we cannot proceed with publication yet, but all variations on the same theme: not because there’s anything wrong with the piece (quite the contrary, for his employer is pleased to be rightfully portrayed in the most positive fashion), but for lack of company standards governing the approval of an employee’s “professional collaboration using social media practices.” Interesting.

Obviously there are tried-and-true means of approval for company-official communications (such as press interviews and news releases, research publications and white papers, web postings and company tweets, etc.), and similarly, companies have established guidelines – ranging from the commonsensical to the perhaps perplexing – for how employees in their private realm may or may not communicate about their employers. For example, proudly wearing your Adam-and-Eve costume minus the foliage on your Facebook Page right next to that official high-res image of the company logo will sadly not earn you the honorable mention with Personnel which you’d always hoped for (although even HR was impressed by the photorealism of your “In the Footsteps of Mel Gibson in Cancun” travelogue). However, that clear delineation between private and corporate citizenship apparently gets blurry when an employee is asked to participate in a purposefully informal communication “medium” such as another person’s (personal) blog. And although this particular blog attempts to serve a professional purpose which is to both inform and entertain in equal measure and to tackle topics with a certain professional theme (the future world of work, with a clear focus on IT), it is still “my” blog. That means it is merely a mechanism and channel for me to express my opinion which is, by definition, something personal (even if it’s professionally done or with a commercial intent), for only individuals have opinions but corporations do not (they instead issue statements, release reports, or create marketing messages, etc.).

I believe that’s the important test between the private and the corporate “you” as far as social media “connectivity” is concerned (where say your VP title and company affiliation can easily “follow” you around into your personal sphere): if it’s a matter of opinion, even if it’s your professional opinion, it’s indeed a private matter (even if and because your opinion is now public). Blogs make for a good example here, as corporations don’t write diaries either. Blogging is about the dissemination of opinion to the public, but it has nothing to do with publishing proper; it has nothing to do with real journalism (Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr., you’re safe, for now); it has nothing to do with the exacting standards of academic research, etc. Blogs are personal opinions that – thanks to Web 2.0 – may spill into your professional life like coffee onto a tie, for all to see. In fact, I know quite a few people who draw that distinction in their daily online lives by conducting all their personal-information sharing via Facebook, while strictly segregating their professional networking via LinkedIn. And if you see a little blue tweety bird fluttering from one to the other just let out that mean ol’ cat.

Back to the story of the temporarily suspended case study on implementing IT solutions at massive scale for Web 2.0-shy Fortune-500 companies. Being in principle a man of principles, I tell my man that I’d rather read Of Mice and Men backwards than not to move forward with publication. He then reminds me of that theoretical particle physicist at CERN who couldn’t help himself this month but make his professional opinion be known, without, however, checking with his boss first: “there can be little doubt that black hole production at the Large Hadron Collider would be an unacceptable and irresponsible risk.” Poor fellow ended up in a black hole of his own making, and we wouldn’t want our corporate friend to share a similar fate. See y’all again next Wednesday.

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Christophe Kolb

Christophe is one of the original pioneers of the technology-enabled remote services industry.

He co-founded Talent Trust (http://www.talenttrust.com) in 2000 to help clients meet their staffing needs with flexible access to highly skilled IT professionals located offshore.

Talent Trust, the reliable and flexible offshore partner you’ve come to know and trust over the last decade is now tightly focused on providing innovative and affordable mobile solutions for the enterprise. Headquartered in San Francisco, Talent Trust employs mobile experts at our own development centers in Córdoba, Argentina and Lima, Peru.

What Makes Us Different? Experience the Power of Global Entrepreneurship.
Completely hands on and entrepreneurial to the core, our overseas management teams and senior developers have a direct interest in the success of their operation. This incentive model promotes long term resource continuity and ensures unconditional alignment with our clients’ success. As a result, our employees treat their clients’ projects as their own and infuse each engagement with an entrepreneur’s “must win” spirit – in contrast to the “nine to five” norm.

Backed by a Team of Local Experts.
In addition, a dedicated San Francisco-based engagement management team guarantees our clients’ satisfaction, specifically taking over the extra tasks associated with offshoring that arise from physical separation. An integral part of the Talent Trust offering, this onshore service is designed to take the friction out of working remotely and ranges in scope from: screening, matching, and allocating the resources; to monitoring their work along with productivity metrics, reporting on progress and project milestones, and facilitating communication; all the way to flagging and resolving any problems, timekeeping, and billing.

Are you looking to build valuable and cost-effective IT solutions that will help your company win in business? And are you looking for entrepreneurial resources that will go the extra mile to ensure your success? Then please visit our web site www.talenttrust.com to learn more, or contact me directly at christophe.kolb@talenttrust.com.

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Christophe Kolb

Christophe is one of the original pioneers of the technology-enabled remote services industry.

He co-founded Talent Trust (http://www.talenttrust.com) in 2000 to help clients meet their staffing needs with flexible access to highly skilled IT professionals located offshore.

Talent Trust, the reliable and flexible offshore partner you’ve come to know and trust over the last decade is now tightly focused on providing innovative and affordable mobile solutions for the enterprise. Headquartered in San Francisco, Talent Trust employs mobile experts at our own development centers in Córdoba, Argentina and Lima, Peru.

What Makes Us Different? Experience the Power of Global Entrepreneurship.
Completely hands on and entrepreneurial to the core, our overseas management teams and senior developers have a direct interest in the success of their operation. This incentive model promotes long term resource continuity and ensures unconditional alignment with our clients’ success. As a result, our employees treat their clients’ projects as their own and infuse each engagement with an entrepreneur’s “must win” spirit – in contrast to the “nine to five” norm.

Backed by a Team of Local Experts.
In addition, a dedicated San Francisco-based engagement management team guarantees our clients’ satisfaction, specifically taking over the extra tasks associated with offshoring that arise from physical separation. An integral part of the Talent Trust offering, this onshore service is designed to take the friction out of working remotely and ranges in scope from: screening, matching, and allocating the resources; to monitoring their work along with productivity metrics, reporting on progress and project milestones, and facilitating communication; all the way to flagging and resolving any problems, timekeeping, and billing.

Are you looking to build valuable and cost-effective IT solutions that will help your company win in business? And are you looking for entrepreneurial resources that will go the extra mile to ensure your success? Then please visit our web site www.talenttrust.com to learn more, or contact me directly at christophe.kolb@talenttrust.com.